African worldviews and research in African studies: the missing ingredient. SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139 ssrn.3637097. Authors: Kwaku Ayim Atta-ouest. Independent researcher. Do researchers’ personal thoughts and beliefs shape research design, findings, and interpretation? These questions are all important for social science research. but he felt that the most important contribution to make was to draw attention to alternative worldviews and to emphasize the importance of philosophy in generating any kind of summary. The dominant belief system, worldview, research tradition or, as it is also called, paradigm influences what can be studied, who can study it and how it should be studied or, to use terms more fanciful: answers to ontological, epistemological and methodological questions. At first, positivism reigned, slowly replaced by positivism. The term “worldviews” is used across disciplinary boundaries, but without an agreed definition it can actually obscure rather than clarify meaning. Use of the term has become more common, particularly in RE religious education in England, since the Commission's 2018 final report on RE, which recommended changing the name of RE,